Category Archives: Ambient

Crystal Castles released their ambient single “Deicide” on Soundcloud today. Their new album is still in the midst of being recorded. The album will be the first sans Alice Glass, whose departure continues to cause a stir. Another recent song, “Frail,” features new Crystal Castles’ singer Edith, whose last name is still under wraps.

Listen to the easygoing swirl of “White Morning,” which evokes 70s dream-pop. The soft, whispery vocals are accented by tiny pinpricks of synth notes, and covered all over with a beautiful guitar fingerwork.

They’ll be playing a few record release shows, including a free one in Brooklyn, before heading back to Montreal.

“I Become A Shade is a dream-ode to banality, isolation, sidelong glances, and rented rooms. Despite its tendency to dwell on such feelings of anxiety and loneliness, I Become A Shade attempts to transcend its land-locked desperateness, arriving briefly at ecstatic junctures of self-discovery and growth. All the while, the rain continues to fall.”

Caribou has released a video for last year’s big song off “Our Love,” and it’s no fish tale.

The video is deceptively simple — it’s all about this little boy and his chance encounter with a giant flying fish (just go with it). The entire video is in slow motion. The boy is seen running, and it first it looks like the fish is chasing him, but then you realize the two are sharing a kind of brief friendship, before the fish continues on without him.

The boy gets a brief opportunity to run his hands along the the fish’s feathers, which are bathed in vibrant reds, greens, yellows, blues and shiny golds, and it may be the most touching part of the video.

With just one scene, the video covers the gamut of a child’s purest emotions: joy, sadness, wonderment and fear.

GABI’s debut album is called “Sympathy” and is due out on April 7 via Software Recording Co.

If you haven’t heard GABI yet, it’s a good bet you’ll be blown away by her sophisticated sound. The Autre Ne Veut Club remix of her single “Fleece” takes you from 0-60 in an instant, moving from ethereal goddess-singer to hyper synth experimentalist. For the “Fleece” remix, GABI partnered with singer Autre Ne Veut, who is also on the Software Recording Co.But GABI’s original “Fleece” is just as beautiful and ghostly. GABI takes each vocal intonation and builds upon it exponentially, creating an almost holy vocal experience.

GABI is Gabrielle Herbst, a New York-based composer and vocalist who studied clarinet and piano, as well as Balinese dance and gamelan in Indonesia. Herbst has also written for chamber orchestra and mixed instrumentation. That work prompted Herbst to create short vocal compositions as GABI. Her upcoming album “Sympathy” is based on the human voice “as instrument, story and landscape.” Working with GABI in the studio was Matthew OKoren on percussion, Rick Quantz on viola, Josh Henderson on violin, and Aaron Roche on electric guitar and trombone.Listen/watch “Fleece (Autre Ne Veut Club Remix)” and watch the video.
GABI’s debut, “Sympathy” is expected April 7 via Software Recording Co. GABI’s record-release show is April 22 at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC.

“Lustmore” is the second album from Lapalux, also known as Stuart Howard, and according to a press release, the album is meant to conjure a retro-futuristic sound a la “Bladerunner” or “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“Lustmore,” according to a press release, is based on hypnogogia, that sweet spot between awake and asleep, and Howard says old movie soundtracks formed much of the basis of “Lustmore.”

“Whenever I think about the album I think about the bar scene in The Shining,” Howard says in the press release. “There’s something about that strange, hallucinatory psychological madness that relates to the music, both in the making of the actual record and the way it sounds.”

“Carl Craig is a peerless remixer. I’ve dreamed of having him remix one of my tracks for ages. He was one of the first people to publicly mention how much he liked ‘Swim’ when it was released and we’ve been in touch since then. Before I’d gathered up the courage to ask him to remix a track on this album he got in touch and suggested it himself. The result is superlative and speaks for itself.”

Ambient-pop Canadian band Seoul has signed with Grand Jury Music and released a new song, “Stay With Us.”
Their music is calming while energizing and uplifting and “Stay With Us” is no exception.
The digital single is now on iTunes with a date for a physical release to soon follow.
Tomorrow, though, they’re playing at Agency Group Showcase at The Standard in New York City at 8:15 p.m.